Teenagers may still complete their schoolwork while adjusting to their natural sleep-cycle rhythms, according to UC San Francisco researchers. The study's conclusions are encouraging for adolescents who struggle with depression because they are more likely than average to report staying up late.
In a given year, around 3 million teenagers experience at least one major depressive episode, and about 40% of them don't respond to therapy. According to study, teens who naturally sleep and get up later are more likely to experience recurrent depression, more severe depression, suicidal and poor antidepressant response.
Lauren Asarnow, PhD, a clinical psychologist with UCSF Health who specialises in sleep health, said, “A big finding here is that there is a subgroup of teens for whom treating sleep is particularly important for improving depression symptoms. And the other big finding is that they really need to be able to live a life that is more in line with their sleep-wake biology.
The study, published in August in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, analysed data from 42 participants with clinical depression who had been part of a larger study of 176 night-owl adolescents. Out of them, 24 adolescents received the intervention, called the Transdiagnostic Sleep and Circadian Intervention (TransS-C), and 18 received educational sessions on how to lead a healthy lifestyle.
